Sunday 3 August 2008

Wine Racking

Freshly racked wine - cherry, rhubarb, ginger, gooseberry.


It's a cloudy, rainy-ish Sunday, and a perfect day for racking off the wine we've been making. We have two gallons ready for their second rack (gooseberry and cherry) and two gallons ready for their third (ginger and rhubarb). I suppose we could bottle the last two at this point,but I figure, when in doubt, rack again. We can be patient.

The ginger wine tastes fantastic already - a warm glowing taste that will be perfect after a walk in the winter, or mulled with brandy and spices. It could still clear a bit. The rhubarb wine is an amazing pale pink, and very sweet. It also packs a hell of a punch. It has cleared well, but another few months won't hurt it.

The cherry wine, though still extremely young (i.e - still in nappies!) already tastes good enough for us to make instant plans to buy enough cherries for a double gallon batch before they're out of season.

The wine making thing started as a bit of fun - a neighbour had glass demijohns sitting around and we thought, well why not? It is easy, and fun, and in terms of bang for buck, it would be hard to beat.

2 comments:

Geosomin said...

rhubarb eh?
My mum in law has a rhubarb plant the size of my car and wants me to take lots of it....hmmmmm.

I'm trying to decide what fruit to bring back from BC to turn into tasty wine or beer...any ideas?? I was thinking of cherry.

grapecat said...

oooh cherry is fantastic - one of my all time fav's! The rhubarb was easy, and the wine looks good. To be honest though, there's not much you can't make wine out of. I've even done onion :)
I think of the ones we've done so far the cranberry has been the best.